The amount of data required to store video can be reduced using video encoding. A number of standards have been developed to facilitate the encoding and sharing of video. H.264 is a block-oriented motion-compensation based codec standard developed by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector's Video Coding Experts Group together with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electro technical Commission (IEC) and Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). H.264 includes a number of features that generally allow it to encode video effectively and provide more flexibility for applications in a wide variety of network environments.
Among the many features of H.264 is the ability to divide up an image into slice groups that define regions of an image. Each slice group can also be divided into several slices that are each a sequence of macroblocks. A macroblock is an image compression component that defines a still image or video frame as two or more blocks of pixels. These macroblocks can be processed in a scan order, such as left to right and top to bottom. Also, each slice can be decoded independently.